I am a Korean. So you might going to see some awkward article usages or numeric errors in my posts. One of the shortcomings of having a language that doesn't care much about numbers or articles as a mother tongue.

How would Korean give you problems with English numbers?

Number = Plural forms in this case, presumably.[/quote]

Well, actually the differences in the concept of what is countable and what is uncountable, along with some minor differences of when a noun should be in its plural form are what I meant.For instance, I might say 'Let me give you an advice,' because in Korean, advice is countable. Also Korean language doesn't require you to use plural nouns if the context tells you whether it is or not, or if the number doesn't have any significance to the meaning of the sentence. Like.. 'with raised eyes,' in Korean would be 'with raised eye,' because usually you have two eyes, and it doesn't really matter if you have one eye or two eyes in the context. Also without an indefinite article, I tend to leave out that oh-so-little-but-apparently-important part of language, let alone be easily confused if I should use it or make the noun plural.When I wrote "Well actually, the differences in the concept of-," I wans't so sure if I should say 'a difference' or 'differences' or 'the differences' or 'the difference,' because in Korean it would be just 'difference,' for if there are many differences or just one doesn't really matters. And I also wasn't sure if I should just say 'concept' or 'the concept,' because the usage of the definite article in Korean language differers from that of English

Well, actually the differences in the concept of what is countable and what is uncountable, along with some minor differences of when a noun should be in its plural form are what I meant.For instance, I might say 'I have a good news' because in Korean, news is countable. Also Korean language(or otherwise: "the Korean language doesn't...") doesn't require you to use plural nouns if the context tells you whether it is or not, or if the number doesn't have any significance to the meaning of the sentence. Like.. 'with raised eyes,' in Korean would be 'with raised eye,' because usually you have two eyes, and it doesn't really matter if you have one eye or two eyes in the context. Also without an indefinite article, I tend to leave out that oh-so-little-but-apparently-important part of language, let alone be easily confused if I should use it or make the noun plural.When I wrote "Well actually, the differences in the concept of-," I wasn't so sure if I should say 'a difference' or 'differences' or 'the differences' or 'the difference,' because in Korean it would be just 'difference,' and if I should just say 'concept' or 'the concept,' for if there are many differences or just a single doesn't really matter, and the usage of the definite article in Korean language differs from that of English

I see. Yes, I believe "differences" and "concept" are acceptable here.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason why you didn't add a space between each paragraph? And any for using two points instead of three for your ellipsis? (In Arabic it's common, for once. I once pointed it out to an Arabic speaker, and she even showed me scans of magazines she had with the headings in the front page containing two-point ellipses.)

And then you've got tricksy little cases like "I am a Korean", which is grammatically but not idiomatically correct – I'd normally suggest "I am Korean", using the adjective form (this is more obvious with other nationalities where the noun form is different – you can say "I am British", or "I am Scottish", or "I am French", but you can't say "I am a British", for example. The pattern of using the adjectival form is kept up with other nationalities. Your usage of the article is technically correct; it's more the fact that you've used a noun instead of an adjective...)

Anyway, I see no glaring errors other than that. To be honest, I do tend to tune out errors a fair bit, which I probably shouldn't as an EFL teacher. As I say, most of your errors seem to be idiomatic rather than grammatical. (we tend to say "raised eyebrow(s)" rather than "raised eye(s)", for instance)

As for advice, it's also countable in most other European languages, so you're not alone there. But I thought you didn't have plurals in Korean ... or am I confusing it with Japanese? (after all, somebody did say their grammars are virtually the same...)

your tense/modal construction there is unnatural. I'm not sure how I'd rephrase it grammatically; perhaps "you'll maybe see" or "you might see" (here is one of the places where English demonstrably has past/nonpast rather than past/present/future).

The easiest way to fix that is You might be going to see because "going to" is always preceded by a form of the verb "be", and "might" is always followed by an infinitive ... although it's pretty unidiomatic because the be is almost always present (is/am/are) or past (was/were). We don't tend to use "be going to" after modal verbs. It's probably a dialect thing but, to me, "you'll maybe see" sounds more unidiomatic than "you might be going to see". I'd always say "Maybe you'll see". I pretty much only use "maybe" at the beginning of the sentence, and only in other places when I've forgotten it at the beginning. "You might see" is even better, but probably only because it's short.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason why you didn't add a space between each paragraph? And any for using two points instead of three for your ellipsis? (In Arabic it's common, for once. I once pointed it out to an Arabic speaker, and she even showed me scans of magazines she had with the headings in the front page containing two-point ellipses.)

Uhm, for the first one, no not realy, I guess the fact that I'm writing this with a phone makes me do that; the screen is pretty small. And I don't understand what your second question is, sorry. What two points??

finlay wrote:

And then you've got tricksy little cases like "I am a Korean", which is grammatically but not idiomatically correct –I'd normally suggest "I am Korean", using the adjective form

I guess that's because I tend to think of the be-verb like the predicative-particle in Korean.And yes, Korean language has plurals, and I'm pretty sure that japanese has it too.. Unless by plurals you mean the word's form changing? We attatch the postfix to make a noun plural.

And I don't understand what your second question is, sorry. What two points??

This:

Quote:

Like.. 'with raised eyes,'

Quote:

Like..

Oh, that. No, no particular reason there also. Usually we do that with '…' but with the phone '.' is much easier to type, and I didn't really felt the need to type three dots if I wasn't going to use the proper mark. Save time and energy I guess? If it's weird, I guess I can start using three dots. It's just that Koreans use punctuation marks as they like on the net, maybe because its role isn't that significant except for , . ? and !

In Xuáli, the relative clause marker is derived from the attributive marker e (which is used to introduce adjective-like attributive phrases), plus the complementiser mi / -m. Relative clauses in Xuáli must have a resumptive pronoun (or rather a resumptive proform suffix), which means it's literally a bit more like "I saw the house that Jack built it."

Na i cev-a teliem Dxek i zacu-ai1s PRED see-OBL house REL Jack PRED build-OBL.3s.DEF.INAN"I saw the house that Jack built (*it).

The complementiser also suffixes to the oblique suffix -a (which, as far as you need to know now, introduces objects) if the clause is the oblique modifier/direct object of a content word. In this case, it's the oblique modifier of dul ("know, one who knows (a fact)")

In relative clause in which the the role of the resumptive pronoun is a clause modifier (such as time, manner or place), the resumptive pronoun may either occur in an adverbial phrase at the end of the clause (as in the first example, or may be fronted to the beginning of the clause (as in the second example). This fronting is possible in main clauses as well, and is handled the same way as topic fronting in Xuáli. A fronted phrase or topic may be followed by do (≈ 'then, thus') or a pause (indicated by a comma).

Na i cev-a teliem Dxek i neni u ni-ái1s PRED see-OBL house REL Jack PRED be.born ADV in-OBL.3.DEF.INAN"I saw the house that Jack was born in (it*).

Buruya Nzaysa has a relative clause auxiliary rɔma-, which inflects for both core participants of a transitive subclause. It is usually placed right at the end of the head NP. (Note that ena 'see' is a so-called ergative verb, which requires reverse agreement on the auxiliary and inverted case marking on the core participants, so mlu 'house' appears in the nominative here.)

Relative clauses referring to a location are built in the same way. In the topicalized version, a pronominal preposition is used instead of a demonstrative pronoun to indicate the place of the relativized noun within the matrix clause:

If the relativized noun plays an oblique role within the relative clause, it will generally be referenced by a demonstrative pronoun within the subclause, subordinated to the appropriate preposition. (In other words, Buruya Nzaysa uses a pronoun-retention strategy when relativizing oblique arguments.) Again, it is possible to topicalize the relativized noun.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular reason why you didn't add a space between each paragraph? And any for using two points instead of three for your ellipsis? (In Arabic it's common, for once. I once pointed it out to an Arabic speaker, and she even showed me scans of magazines she had with the headings in the front page containing two-point ellipses.)

Uhm, for the first one, no not realy, I guess the fact that I'm writing this with a phone makes me do that; the screen is pretty small. And I don't understand what your second question is, sorry. What two points??

finlay wrote:

And then you've got tricksy little cases like "I am a Korean", which is grammatically but not idiomatically correct –I'd normally suggest "I am Korean", using the adjective form

I guess that's because I tend to think of the be-verb like the predicative-particle in Korean.And yes, Korean language has plurals, and I'm pretty sure that japanese has itthem too.. Unless by plurals you mean the word's form changing? We attatch thea postfix to make a noun plural.

I'm like 99% certain that Japanese doesn't have any grammatical way of marking plural – you'd have to use a quantifier or a numeral.

Wait, is the ellipsis typed as one character on English keyboards? I always just write 3 dots, both in handwriting and on the computer.

There is a Unicode character for the ellipsis, U+2026. It looks like this (brackets added for clarity) […]. On a Mac keyboard it can be entered with the Option-Semicolon key combination, on Windows with the Alt+0133 character code, in HTML with the &hellip; character reference, and in TeX with the \ldots command. Many word processing programs will automatically replace a sequence of three periods [...] with the ellipsis character.

Wait, is the ellipsis typed as one character on English keyboards? I always just write 3 dots, both in handwriting and on the computer.

In English and most other modern written languages, natives usually write an ellipsis by typing three dots. In most contexts they are then handled as three different Unicode points indeed, to the point that in a monospaced font they may take three characters: like this...

Some word processors, notably Micro$oft Word, always transform any ellipsis to the Unicode point U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS, which shows an ellipsis in a single Unicode point. The advantage is that in a monospaced font, the ellipsis would take a single character, so space is gained: like this…

In Japanese and Simplified Chinese, however, the standard way to handle ellipses is to use the U+2026 point and not three points, which IMEs handle as a sequence on its own. In Simplified Chinese keyboard layouts it's usually Shift + 6 for programs in Windows (this applies for example to Google's Chinese IME and Microsoft's Pinyin IME 3.0), I'm not sure what it's like in Japanese, but in the IME Microsoft uses you just type three periods/full stop, press the space key (to be given input alternatives, as much of the rest of the IME), and then the Down key to be given the option of using U+2026 instead of three 。。。(EDIT: I should also point out both Japanese and Chinese use two U+2026 points: 这样……)

Ollock wrote:

It's three periods, but some word processors format it specially.

Funnily enough, typing a proper ellipsis is near impossible on a Chinese input method.

For a Simplified Chinese IME, press Shift 6. If by a Chinese IME you're talking about Microsoft's default IMEs for Traditional Chinese, then yes, you'd need to buy a special program to handle Chinese punctuation appropriately (or just download Google's IME, it's great for Traditional and most importantly, free). This explains why Taiwanese people who use Windows generally use English punctuation instead: ... (three Unicode points) instead of … (one Unicode point), ! (variable width) instead of ！(fullwidth), etc.

Funnily enough, typing a proper ellipsis is near impossible on a Chinese input method.

For a Simplified Chinese IME, press Shift 6. If by a Chinese IME you're talking about Microsoft's default IMEs for Traditional Chinese, then yes, you'd need to buy a special program to handle Chinese punctuation appropriately (or just download Google's IME, it's great for Traditional and most importantly, free).

I use Google Pinyin on Windows and SCMP on my Ubuntu laptop. I do agree that Google Pinyin is the best one.

Wait, is the ellipsis typed as one character on English keyboards? I always just write 3 dots, both in handwriting and on the computer.

In English and most other modern written languages, natives usually write an ellipsis by typing three dots. In most contexts they are then handled as three different Unicode points indeed, to the point that in a monospaced font they may take three characters: like this...

Some word processors, notably Micro$oft Word, always transform any ellipsis to the Unicode point U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS, which shows an ellipsis in a single Unicode point. The advantage is that in a monospaced font, the ellipsis would take a single character, so space is gained: like this…

I really hate seeing the ellipsis character in a monospaced font for exactly this reason. It doesn't look right. I never use it if I can help it. I also absolutely despise the fi and fl ligatures that come up in so many fonts (including the one I'm using, goddammit). Again, they look absolutely terrible in monospaced fonts. I've read at least one book which had sections in monospace to denote a computer conversation where the automatic replacement of fi and fl with their ligature counterparts, and of ... with …, made the whole thing look unnatural and jarring.

I really hate seeing the ellipsis character in a monospaced font for exactly this reason. It doesn't look right. I never use it if I can help it. I also absolutely despise the fi and fl ligatures that come up in so many fonts (including the one I'm using, goddammit). Again, they look absolutely terrible in monospaced fonts. I've read at least one book which had sections in monospace to denote a computer conversation where the automatic replacement of fi and fl with their ligature counterparts, and of ... with …, made the whole thing look unnatural and jarring.

What is a computer conversation?

To be honest, the idea that the advantage of using U+2026 is gaining space is just a hypothesis of mine, otherwise I think it's pretty damn pointless that MS Word automatically changes every ellipsis to it.

I'm like 99% certain that Japanese doesn't have any grammatical way of marking plural –you'd have to use a quantifier or a numeral.

Oh.. didn't know that. I thought -達was equivalent to -들, but maybe not. I only learned basics of basics when I tried to learn Japanese. The fact that I'd have to memorize a whole bunch of Chinese characters just made me give up.Ah, and by the way thank you for correcting those. I love when my English gets corrected; helps me learn.

Bob Johnson wrote:

suelior wrote:

And yes, Korean language has plurals, and I'm pretty sure that japanese has it too.. Unless by plurals you mean the word's form changing? We attatch the postfix to make a noun plural.

Can you say this?

펜들이 있다pen-deul-i itdapen-PL-NOM existThere are some pens.

The equivalent in Japanese:

ペン達があるpen-tachi-ga arupen-PL-NOM exist

makes it sound like the pens are people.

(Please feel free to correct my Korean.)

Your Korean is fine. We can use it that way, only we normaly wouldn't. Unless there is a significance to whether there are pens or is a pen, we'd drop the -들.

I'm like 99% certain that Japanese doesn't have any grammatical way of marking plural –you'd have to use a quantifier or a numeral.

Oh.. didn't know that. I thought -達was equivalent to -들, but maybe not. I only learned basics of basics when I tried to learn Japanese. The fact that I'd have to memorize a whole bunch of Chinese characters just made me give up.Ah, and by the way thank you for correcting those. I love when my English gets corrected; helps me learn.

Bob Johnson wrote:

suelior wrote:

And yes, Korean language has plurals, and I'm pretty sure that japanese has it too.. Unless by plurals you mean the word's form changing? We attatch the postfix to make a noun plural.

Can you say this?

펜들이 있다pen-deul-i itdapen-PL-NOM existThere are some pens.

The equivalent in Japanese:

ペン達があるpen-tachi-ga arupen-PL-NOM exist

makes it sound like the pens are people.

(Please feel free to correct my Korean.)

Your Korean is fine. We can use it that way, only we normally wouldn't. Unless there is a significance toit's important/significant whether there are pens or is a pen, we'd drop the -들.

I should clarify that Bob knows far more Japanese than I do, although I'm going to Japan next year and need to start practising... the kanji do put me off as well though, I have to say. There are obviously ways that you can mark plural in Japanese, as he demonstrates, but evidently it has some kind of pragmatic function too that "makes it sound like the pens are people".

Also, the fact that neither the Japanese -tachi nor the Korean -deul are obligatory is important; in English it very much is obligatory to mark number on nouns. That's where the difference lies between our languages.

Funnily enough, typing a proper ellipsis is near impossible on a Chinese input method.

For a Simplified Chinese IME, press Shift 6. If by a Chinese IME you're talking about Microsoft's default IMEs for Traditional Chinese, then yes, you'd need to buy a special program to handle Chinese punctuation appropriately (or just download Google's IME, it's great for Traditional and most importantly, free). This explains why Taiwanese people who use Windows generally use English punctuation instead: ... (three Unicode points) instead of … (one Unicode point), ! (variable width) instead of ！(fullwidth), etc.

I just found out how to do it in Microsoft's "New Phonetic" keyboard layout for Traditional Chinese (the Bopomofo one): if you restore the language bar, you get the option of using "half shape" or "full shape" Latin letters and punctuation. If you select "full shape", you can type it by inputting a hyphen, pressing the down key, pressing the number 2, and then Enter. But it's still much more laborious than a simple Shift 6. Just use Google's IME with Traditional Chinese on anyway.

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